


Smooth Me Down

by pinksnowboots



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety, Character Study, Doubt, Freeform, Hands, Holding Hands, Katsuki Yuuri-centric, M/M, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Doubt, Victuuri Week, Victuuri Week 2017, reassurance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-10
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2018-09-23 06:55:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9645302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinksnowboots/pseuds/pinksnowboots
Summary: Yuuri picks at his fingernails, picks at his loose skin, picks at every flaw, mental and physical, leaving his fingers a mess of hangnails and rough edges.Victor is not afraid of his rough edges.Written for Victuuri Week 2017, Day 3, using the Yuuri Prompt: Reassurance/Doubt





	

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, this was written for Victuuri Week, day 3. I used the Yuuri Prompt: Doubt/Reassurance. To be honest, I didn't intend to participate in Victuuri Week because I have so many other half-finished fic projects lurking around, but this prompt just got to me in a big way.
> 
> Just as a warning, this fic does talk about skin picking, which I know may bother some people; there is also a brief mention of blood. It also touches on Yuuri's anxiety, so if any of that bothers you, I wanted to let you know in advance. I don't mean to squick anyone out, I just put a lot of my own personal experience with anxiety and nervous habits into this and this is how it turned out.

 

 

Yuuri picks at the skin just under the edges of his fingernails. It’s the one part of his body that is never smooth, no matter how much weight he gains, softening the rest of his hard edges. His fingertips are always rough, perhaps because his nails bite into the tender skin that they’re supposed to protect when he clenches his fists. And he clenches his fists often, the same way he grinds his teeth at night-unconsciously, too often, and much too hard, as if trying to grind out his insecurities, to gird himself against his anxieties.

It does not work, and Yuuri finds his self-deprecating thoughts breaking through his teeth whenever someone compliments him, leaving his jaw and his heart sore.

It is a good thing that the audience cannot see figure skaters’ hands up close because his are a mess, cuticles ragged and nails uneven lengths because every time one of them grows long he has to peel it off. He uses the nails of his thumb and index fingers and between those, he can easily get eight of the fingernails, all but the thumbnails, picked down flush to the soft skin underneath.

His habit leaves him with eight short and jagged and two unpleasantly long nails, and constant hangnails. The hangnails are painful, but they also give him something to pick at, something to do with his hand when he doesn’t know what to think of say; when he doesn’t have any he picks at his scabs, at the loose skin on the soles of his feet, or at the edges of his fingers until new hangnails appears.

Regardless of the state his body is in, he always picks at himself mentally, zeroing in on every flaw in his personality and performances. He has a lot of flaws, so it never gets old. 

Everyone has to have a hobby, he figures.

 

Victor, whose nails are perfectly manicured and whose hands are perfectly smooth, despairs of his habits.

“Presentation is everything,” he lectures. “As a performer, you must pay as much attention to your appearance as you do to your skating.”

Victor buys him fingernail files and nail clippers, and Yuuri loses every single one, letting them fall into the crack between his bed and the wall or dropping them into Makkachin’s overflowing box of toys. Yuuri seems to be guileless but he must know that Victor cannot be mad at him when he’s so endearingly contrite.

Eventually Victor tries a different strategy, lending Yuuri his own nail file. It works, but only halfway; Yuuri does not lose it, but he also does not use it, and if Victor were less vain about his hair he would tear it out in frustration.

 

 

 

Even later, much much later, when they have transcended the boundaries of coach and skater, of idol and fan, of mere friendship, Victor maintains his fascination with Yuuri’s hands. 

Once, when they are lying in bed together, Yuuri half asleep as Victor plays with his fingers, Victor remarks casually, “You know, I don’t remember your hands being so rough when we first met at the Gala.”

Yuuri is just tired enough to be totally honest without worrying about the consequences. 

“That’s because Celestino had me get a manicure before the competition. He claimed it would help my presentation and maybe my confidence.”

“Did it?” Victor asks, curious.

“No.” Yuuri replies. “I felt so uncomfortable having nice nails, even if it was only clear paint. I spent so much time worrying that I was going to ruin them by accident that after my free skate, I broke a nail and ruined them on purpose, just to get it over with.”

Victor says nothing in response to that, just pulls Yuuri closer.

 

 

 

Yuuri rarely picks at himself enough that he bleeds, but it happens sometimes, when he’s picking at his nails unconsciously while thinking about something else, rather than picking at them intentionally in order to avoid thinking about anything. 

It happens once when he’s sitting with Victor, listening to Victor’s critiques and suggestions about his routine and taking every word as a direct affirmation that every negative thing he’s said about himself is true. Yuuri fiddles with the hangnail on his left pinky, pulls the skin off the wrong way until the hangnail is gone, but in its place is a small drop of blood.

He clasps his hands together quickly and tries not to look at the blood, but Victor sees anyway. Without missing a beat in his sentence, Victor unwinds Yuuri’s hands from where they’re clasped nervously in his lap and takes them in his own, keeping them still and safe, unable to do any more damage.

“Victor, I’m sorry-” Yuuri tries to apologize because a tiny bit of his blood is on Victor’s hands and he cannot believe that he got blood on The Victor Nikiforov, even more than he cannot believe that The Victor Nikiforov is here coaching him.

“What are you apologizing for?” Victor cuts off any further apology.

“For...I...there’s blood on your hands.” Yuuri finally manages.

Victor looks at him in a way that Yuuri’s beginning to recognize, like he’s just been handed a new puzzle piece and he’s trying to figure out exactly where it fits.

“Oh, you don’t need to apologize for that.” Victor replies, voice far more breezy than his gaze. “Although it would make me feel better if you didn’t make yourself bleed on a regular basis.”

Yuuri nods, unwilling to promise anything verbally, unwilling to lie to Victor.

For whatever reason, it’s easier to listen to critiques and easier to take compliments when Victor’s holding his hand. The warmth of Victor’s hand on his own distracts him from the fact that he can’t keep fiddling with his nails, and the anxiety...well, it’s still there, but it’s about his palms getting sweaty and this not being regular behavior for a skater and a coach. At this point, novel sources of anxiety are a welcome break from the constant mantra of _You’re not good enough_  that is always playing in his head.

 

 

If this were a movie, Yuuri would stop picking at himself for Victor, because Victor cares about him and doesn’t like to see Yuuri hurting himself. In a movie, Victor swooping into his life would cure his anxiety rather than simply confusing it so it goes away for a while, then sneaks up on him in new ways that he’s never experienced before and therefore can’t guard against.

Yuuri doesn’t stop picking at himself because Victor doesn’t like it; in fact, he does it more because it makes Victor worry and fuss over him and Yuuri has been taken care of so rarely in the past five years that he craves it, from Victor especially.

Victor takes Yuuri’s personal hand care routine into his own hands, literally. Every night he brings Yuuri into his room and trims and files his nails, pushes back his cuticles, clips off any hangnails, and rubs soft, expensive lotion into his skin. 

It’s embarrassing for Yuuri to have his coach, idol, friend, and more focusing on him so intently, and he finds it hard not to fidget and squirm under Victor’s ministrations. It is almost surreal, the way that Victor treats his hands gently, almost reverently, and Yuuri wonders more than once how and why Victor came into his life, and how long he’s intending to stay.

Yuuri’s hands are in the best shape they have ever been; his skin is soft and his nails are even, but every day he still picks away at the skin around his nails, undoing all of Victor’s hard work. He feels bad, but it means that Victor has to keep doing it, so he can’t bring himself to stop.

Yuuri has so many feelings that swell in his chest whenever Victor takes his hands. He wants desperately to express them, but whenever he tries, all that he can manage is a soft, breathy, “Thank you.” Victor takes care of his hands like he’s maintaining a holy relic and his bathroom is a place of worship, and Yuuri does not want to defile it with loud voices or clumsy words that can’t come close to approximating what it is that he feels. 

Victor squeezes his hands, admiring his work, and then suddenly pulls Yuuri into his arms. Yuuri can feel Victor’s breath on his neck and wonder’s if Victor can feel his suddenly-rapid heartbeat.

“You’re more than welcome.” Victor breathes into his ear, but does not let him go. 

Yuuri swears that he hears a soft voice, Victor’s voice, adding, “For you, anything.” But he hears it in the same way that you hear an echo, or a whisper, or a voice in a dream, and he’s not sure at all that he didn’t just imagine it.

 

* * *

 

There is no word that Yuuri knows of to describe the area around his fingernails that he just cannot leave be. He could spend time describing the area, but then he would have to show people his damaged fingers and explain his little tics and well, it’s just not worth it. 

There is no word for that, and there is no word for what Yuuri feels towards Victor-for the warmth that rises up in his chest when he remembers that Victor is not going to leave him anytime soon, for the rush of pride that he feels when he hears Victor praise him, for the way that Victor's touch helps him breathe just a little bit easier. There is no word, in Japanese or English, that accurately captures the full experience how he feels about Victor, what Victor means to him, so he decides to call it love. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and thank you to the lovely folks running Victuuri Week! The YOI fandom is such a large and active fandom, and it's a pleasure to be a part of; I can't wait to read all the amazing fics that come out of Victuuri Week!
> 
> If you want to talk to me about anything at all, you can get in touch with me over at @yuroshka (my main blog) or @pinksnowboots (my fic blog) on tumblr! Or leave a comment here-I get ridiculously excited for every comment I get.


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